Something that gets me..(Pirate Games)

Nintendo was by far hurt the most in the long run but at the time, Mega Drive was still the big thing in the UK. (Sega was really protective back then.)

Honestly, lots of people used to backup their own games (and their friends and rentals) because the internet was a million times smaller back then. Just to distinguish the two, pirate games ("roms") are identical to original games. How you obtain them is your business. People steal games from Toys R Us too.

 

Ok I'll reword. It's still a device that was designed to let you break the law and get games for free. I don't see how this is different to, say, emulators for blatant piracy or the scenes that surround them. I'm not trying to pick an argument here, I'm just interested in your opinion since you're obviously a big collector of backup devices, but I would have though you hate what they were used for.

 

I think old console piracy "in the day" was more tame. Fewer people did it, it hurt the industry less. Most people "pirated" games for themselves and for their friends. But then again, a long time ago, more peopel bought pirated software. I'm not trying to justify it morally, I'm just saying that I like them more than the modern "pirates." I don't see how anyone could even even call themselves that, since 99% of the scene does none of the work. Modern "pirates" stereotypically love leetspeek, love talking about their complete GoodSNES collection or 75 PSX ISOs, don't own a fifth of the consoles they emulate and are generally stupid assholes. How dumb is having every ROM in the GoodSNES collection? 25% of the files are bad dumps. Their ignorance (and arrogance) can be astounding.

I feel that it should be up to the individual where their stance on piracy lies, everyones a big kid now, they can make their own decision. I don't feel that backup devices, which can be seen as the ultimate game enhancer should take flak from everyone. It seems that people bitch a lot more about copiers than they do about emulators. Thats annoying to me because its literally the same thing (and more.) Not to mention that probably a hundred times more people use emulators for their piracy fixes than copiers.

My personal stance (not that it matters) is that I really don't care, I believe software should be public domain and that it should be up to the software engineers to make sure their product doesn't fall to piracy. I'll continue to do my thing, and everyone else can do theirs (but that won't stop me from reporting retards who think they can sell bootleg material.)

There is a HUGE difference between bootlegs and copiers. Most people who don't own or know of them don't understand this. Games played in a copier's RAM only exist in a physical state until the power is cycled, bootlegs last forever. Playing games on a copier is like renting games for free, you get to play as much as you want, but you essentially don't own it or any of it's perks.

 

Fair shout, I understand where you're coming from now. Not too sure a judge would, though ;-)

 

What do judges know? Court is SO biased in technology cases. This still wouldn't be an issue now that, (at least in the US,) discontinued or obsolete game software is considered public domain. Nintendo sure would never acknowledge this though. I still don't like to see people saying "lets download R0mz0rz! They're legal now!"

 

My 2 cents

I dont like pirated stuff full stop however I have some roms for games I own because my real stuff is in the loft at the mo.

I own debuggers of playstations to play imported stuff and generally look cool :drinkers:

All pirating harms the industry and I know of folk losing jobs because of companys going to the wall which cant be blamed on pirates (to a degree) :smt067

 

I'll be honest. I have SNES, NES, GBA/GB/GBC, Genesis, and some PSX ISOs. Yeh I know its illegal and stuff but meh. I no longer download. Last time I downloaded one was back in 2002. I own the real copies of some of the ROMS I own, especially for SNES and Genny. I just don't plan on downloading any more.

 

The DMCA exemptions about obsolete hardware and media don't add up to much, the original copyright of the software contained on the medium itself still holds - it's only the medium and the hardware that are considered obsolete. It wouldn't stand up in court if Nintendo actually did sue you for having GoodSNES on your hdd, as you still need to own the original.

What it all boiled down to was, a few companies still need to use that old Amiga database, and needed the legal protection to make copies of the program (illegal under DMCA) and work around any lock-out protection system (again, illegal under DMCA).

I'm not sure I explained that so well. If you want to read more about it go here: http://curmudgeongamer.com/article.php?story=20031029194745663

 

Welp, with the game's interleaved not to mention AES-128 encryption, its not like they'll find anything > The few trillion years it'll take to crack without a miracle will far surpass the 75 year copyright title. Also, whats GoodSNES? All I have are all these SFXXXXX files.

 

Not much use when you feel like using any of them though is it :smt043

What's AES-128 btw?

 

You don't think there's a backdoor to every encryption?

The government has a public/private access key list terabytes in size, so any encryption that uses public/private access key's is a waste of time if the government get their oar in.

Security is only as good as the amount of time the government takes to send a warrant for the backdoor information. How do you think terrorists get caught out?

Before anyone say's I don't have a fucking clue, I work for the government and the Mrs works in this area.

 

News to me, I better write my own 1k key encryption/compression algorithm then
If you break up any recognizable strings through compression, how the hell would they know when its cracked even? A neat idea would be to write a program that decompressed/decrypted your file on the fly and placed it into some RAM array, allowing temporary access, when power is cycled though, evidence is gone

 

He is right too, and the funny part is that most programmers and coders leave backdoors in just for the feds, or tell the feds how to crack.. Isnt that somethin

 

I think there's some legal loophole, something like they can be arrested for obstructing justice, if they don't provide a way in and their software/hardware is used in a crime.

 

o_0 that couldn't be true in the US. Where are our rights?

 

If anything, it's probably more true in the US. The American government is probably second to none in espionage and all that shizznit. You should see the mobile phone/radio interceptors run the the US Gov here in the UK, absolutely massive, and are "apparently" able to record, decypher and scan for keywords, every phone conversation in the UK at once.

I don't buy its "r0xx0r" supposed capabilities, but it is there for those reasons of "security"

The "rights" issue comes in, that they would "never" use their powers, unless they had a valid reason to think you had commited a crime, or were planning/capable of committing/soliciting others into doing a crime.

 

Damn facist republicans (jk)

That has to be a load of shit. (The phone thing)

Anyways, our government would never come out and say "Big Brother is watching you" but of course that's what they want you to think. Media has tried to imply that our phone conversation have been parsed since the 70s or something rediculous.

 

Behold, t3h p0w4r of Echelon:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/503224.stm

 

Its not suprising, something like that is needed to enforce the Patriot Act. I wonder when we're going to abolish that anyways. I really don't understand how some super computers could listen in on EVERY phone line. Phones operate in real time afterall.

 

The patriot act is a joke... Anywho in every datacenter in the USA, theres a black box that isnt there, called CARNIVORE, put in place by the FBI.. it scans all data going in and outta the datacenter for certian keywords and phrases

Im assuming ones like (Joe Blow is gonna Blow the White House at 3:53 am on December, 7 1966) or some bull ya know?